


Yea, Though I Walk

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Dark Dean Winchester, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:56:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/422866.html">The Fall Fandom Free For All</a>. The request was <i>Dean/(anybody): Dean comes back from hell with a sadistic streak something fierce, as Alistair broke him but put him back together in his own image. Everybody in Dean's life now thinks he's simply in shambles, when really all he wants is to be able to make something hurt on his own terms.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Yea, Though I Walk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hegemony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegemony/gifts).



> No explicit slash, but a lot of implication.

It isn’t anything like dying.

Dying was painful, yeah, but Dean has to admit that there was something freeing about it as well—something about knowing that he was finally done, that it had happened. Something about knowing that he didn’t have to shoulder the load anymore.

It still took them thirty years to break him, and in the end it wasn’t the pain that did him in. It wasn’t the degradation or the taunts.

It was the boredom.

Pain is pain is pain, and even Alistair’s creativity eventually started to pale into a constant, staticy wash that Dean could easily tune out. Dad hurt him worse lots of times, with nothing more than a casual word or a disappointed glance. Sam ... Now, Sam could have taught Alistair a thing or two.

But anyway, that isn’t his point. His point is that it isn’t anything like dying.

One minute, he’s knee deep in entrails and has blood slicking his arms to the elbows—contentment, release, _creativity_ —and the next he’s being caged again, shoved into something putrid and stinking and it’s flesh, it’s meat, and no matter how much he snarls and resists, the bright, too-hot thing yanking him out of Hell won’t let go.

 **I deliver you, Dean Winchester. I redeem you.**

But it doesn’t feel like deliverance, whatever the white voice says. And Dean’s too smart to think he’s anywhere near capable of redemption anymore. He passed that the first time Alistair touched him and he arched into it instead of shuddering. Right about the time he caught a glimpse of himself in a rolling, severed eyeball and found black, gleeful eyes gleaming back.

He hisses, ripping and clawing at the light, and it only holds on tighter. It grips his shoulder and burns him, right through to the shredded, corroded tatters of his soul.

Dean hasn’t really felt pain in decades, but he recognizes it when he feels it and he snarls as the kidnapping, bastard of a light melts what’s left back together and fills in the empty spaces with something that feels like grey matter.

Except then, with a gradual, sinking sensation, it doesn’t. It’s starting to feel like Winchester, that sorry son of a bitch that Dean left behind when he accepted Alistair’s knife and stepped off the rack.

 _No,_ he thinks, horrified. _No no no no._

 **Yes,** the white voice replies, implacable, and then the flesh cage seals closed around him and he screams.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Bobby splashes him with holy water, and Dean has a moment of panic before he realizes that he isn’t burning. He doesn’t understand why not, until he feels that tiny, sickened flicker inside of him—Winchester trying to come back out—and then he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from sneering. He can’t quite keep the disgust off his face, but Bobby is apparently too floored by the fact that he’s alive to notice.

Bobby lulls Dean into a false sense of security. It’s easy to see him. Easy to remain detached and hungry to get back home. It’s so easy that Dean is surprised to find his eyes green when he looks in the mirror in Bobby’s bathroom.

But after Bobby, and with the inevitability of a scream after the knife, comes Sam.

Ruby’s there, hiding in some big-lipped chick and playing human—as though Dean couldn’t smell her a mile away, the whore—but he loses all sight of her when Sam steps into his line of sight. For a single, singing instant, the flesh around Dean doesn’t feel like a cage. He’s _grateful_ for the skin because it means he can touch. It means he can feel the warmth of his brother’s cheek against his fingertips. He’ll be able to feel the twitch of Sam’s muscles when he opens him up and sticks his hand inside.

Winchester wails from somewhere inside him and Dean blinks, distracted.

It’s only for a moment, but it’s long enough for Sam to get the jump on him, and Dean’s horrified by his own weakness in this body. This body that is decaying around him—he can feel it—but not quickly enough to send him where he wants to go.

Bobby saves him, and it burns inside of Dean, bitter and deep.

 _Fucking pussy,_ he tells Winchester, and goes about thinking of how to get that used up, pathetic grey matter out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Winchester is like a thirteen year old with a crush around Sam. It’s really fucking annoying, especially since Dean can smell the demon in him. It sort of makes him want to step out of the closet and see if Sam wants to paint the town, but he can tell from all the goody-two-shoes skulking Ruby’s doing that Sam still has delusions of morality. Normally, Dean would be all for ripping those apart, but Winchester is loud and fucking annoying and ... and okay, yeah, sometimes he gets confused about what he’s doing here.

Sometimes, he looks in the mirror and can’t figure out whether he’s relieved or depressed not to see a flicker of black.

And then there’s Castiel.

Dean hates the angel; tried to carve it up but good once Bobby was unconscious and couldn’t tell on him. The stupid son of a bitch actually stood there and let Dean peel back the flesh of its chest to the ribs before touching his shoulder—burn scar there holding him together—and sending a wash of white through him.

And then he was Winchester for several, terrible minutes. He was Winchester and he was mewling and puking on himself and sobbing and finally Castiel got fed up with the pussy as well and put Dean back in charge.

“Balance,” the angel said somberly, looking down at him as Dean grimaced and spat. “You cannot have all of his strength.”

Dean grinned up at him, as shamed and sick as he felt, because Winchester ceded every hard, stone-sharp bit of himself when he let Dean step off the rack. And Dean’s not giving any of it back.

Except then everything went black for a bit—not the good, oil-slick kind of black that meant Hell was shifting the scenery on him, but a nothing black, a talking-behind-his-back kind of black—and when he came back the angel was gone and Winchester was ... Winchester was different. Not stronger precisely, but less of a complete and utter waste of time.

Aside from the mooning over Sam, actually, Winchester isn’t half bad now. He’s witty as fuck, for one thing, and he shares Dean’s taste in women, which is really fucking good because having Winchester mewling at him in the middle of things wasn’t going to do a thing for his dick. Dean limits himself to some heavy petting for a while just to be one the safe side and then, finally, makes his move.

Winchester is right there with him—actually helps him land the bitch—until they’re in the backseat of the Impala and Dean has her naked and pinned and is getting ready to rip open her cheek with his teeth. Then Winchester surges forward and takes control, the fucker, turning Dean’s head to the side and keeping him facing that way while they pump to completion. Dean snarls and rips at him, but Winchester has picked the worst time to man up and just ignores Dean while he gets the bitch off and helps her back on with her clothes.

Then he drives them both out to an empty parking lot and stops the car, sitting with his hands on the wheel and his eyes staring out into the night.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he whispers.

 _You never did it, you weak fuck,_ Dean spits. _Now give me back my body._ He surges, nearly wrests control back before being pushed aside.

“It’s mine too,” Winchester says. “You and me, we’re. You’re not supposed to be here. Cas said he thought he burned you out.”

 _Guess I’m stronger than he thought,_ Dean smirks, proud despite his current impotency.

Winchester is silent for a moment and then he says, “He never should have brought us back. I don’t know why he did, but I was ... I don’t think I’m supposed to be here anymore.”

 _Thought that was me,_ Dean taunts.

Winchester shakes his head. “I don’t—both of us, I think. Cas tried to burn you out, but he just. He split us instead.”

 _Guess I got all the good parts, huh?_

“You need me.”

 _Like Hell I do._

Winchester quirks his mouth. “Okay then, you want me.”

That sure as fuck isn’t true. Except for how Dean suspects it is. Winchester’s annoying when he’s mooning over Sam, but ... it’s an interesting feeling. Sometimes. Maybe.

“So here’s the deal. I can help you survive up here. You can’t go around killing people and expect to get away with it for long. There are ... other outlets.”

 _And what do you get out of it?_ Dean asks suspiciously, but he knows even before Winchester answers.

“I’m tired of being the fucking victim. So what do you say?”

Really, there’s only one response Dean can make.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s difficult, at first. He’s still more one than the other, even when he makes a concerted effort. Sam tends to bring out the Winchester in him, which leaves him weak in ways he doesn’t like. The sluts they fuck, on the other hand, have a tendency to leave Dean in charge, which usually ends up in bruises _(theirs)_ and split lips _(his, when they slap him and run screaming)_. Dean would have gutted more than a few for daring, but Winchester is just strong enough to keep him from giving chase.

But they’re settling, bit by bit: circling in a narrowing gyre toward that magical point where they will cease to be two and become one again.

And then Winchester shows the rest of his hand—those other outlets he mentioned when he first brought up the idea of merging—and Dean is amazed he didn’t think of it before.

The rack. The whip. The knives and needles and burning metal rods.

And the bitches ask for it. They scream for more.

It isn’t what he craves, exactly, but it’s closer than anything else he’s been allowed to have. He gets to know the type he wants—something in the eyes—and the clubs are easier and easier to sniff out. Dean’s favorite hunting ground.

They leave Sam to go traipsing off with Ruby and pick a girl. Dean always rents a room at the club, but he brings his own equipment. Alistair taught him that a great artist always uses his own tools. And then, carefully, so that it lasts, he goes to work.

Usually, he imagines Sam in the bitch’s place. It isn’t sexual—Dean prefers women and Alistair, it’s simple as that—but there’s just something about Sam that gets him in a deep, primal way. Something about those puppy eyes and that lying mouth that puts him in minds of pokers and scalpels.

Sam thinks he’s a tough son of a bitch these days, but he wouldn’t last a minute on Dean’s table in Hell.

Thoughts like that inevitably distress Winchester, until Dean finally gets the bright idea to ask, “What if he wants it?”

The girl he’s working on twitches, turning her head with an inarticulate moan. Plugging her mouth with a thick ball isn’t as satisfying as cutting out her tongue would have been, but Dean’s learning to adjust to the limitations of the present. Until he manages to bring Winchester into the fold, that is.

 _Sam isn’t like this,_ Winchester protests. He says it like ‘this’ is something shameful. Like Dean hasn’t stepped back and let him wield the blades more than once. Like he hasn’t learned to enjoy it.

But he maybe has a point. The vibes Sam sends off, Dean’s more likely to get his brother at his side than underneath the knife. Willingly, anyway. He supposes that he’s already assimilated enough of Winchester to acknowledge that as an acceptable outcome.

“We should bring him here,” he murmurs, dragging a long, thin slice up the girl’s back.

She twitches again, crying out, and he notices that she’s dropped the rag she insisted on holding in lieu of a safety word when he gagged her. It’s sort of cute that she actually expects him to stop.

As if there are safety words in Hell.

But Winchester might make him stop. If he notices.

So Dean distracts him by adding, “If we bring him here, you think he’d enjoy _this_?” and then makes another, deeper cut.

The girl is trying to get away now, struggling with him, but Dean doesn’t need Hell’s power to keep her still. And Winchester is just as entranced by the fresh blood as he is, he can tell. He can feel them drifting closer, just a fraction out of joint now.

“Wonder what he’d look like all covered in her blood,” he prods, slicking a finger himself. “You think he’d want to hear her scream?”

There’s a shudder and a snap and he’s home, he’s Dean Winchester and he has a screaming, struggling woman beneath him. He isn’t sure what to do with her for a moment. Isn’t sure what he wants to do.

It’s habit more than anything that makes him bring the knife up to her throat and slit it, shutting her up, but he doesn’t feel all that bad afterward. Not all that bad at all.

Wiping the blade on the woman’s discarded clothes, he gets dressed again and packs the knife away. He thinks it’s about time to sit Sam down for a long talk, now that he’s himself again. Get rid of Ruby, take the kid under his own wing.

He grins at the thought of it, he and Sam together again.

They’ll paint the town.


End file.
